'My father should die in prison" - daughter of Dominique Pelicot in exclusive interview

It was 20:25 connected a Monday evening successful November 2020 erstwhile Caroline Darian got the telephone that changed everything.

On the different extremity of the telephone was her mother, Gisèle Pelicot.

"She announced to maine that she discovered that greeting that [my father] Dominique had been drugging her for astir 10 years truthful that antithetic men could rape her," Darian recalls successful an exclusive interrogation with BBC Radio 4's Today programme's Emma Barnett.

"At that moment, I mislaid what was a mean life," says Darian, present 43.

"I retrieve I shouted, I cried, I adjacent insulted him," she says. "It was similar an earthquake. A tsunami."

Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years successful jailhouse astatine the extremity of a historical three-and-a-half period proceedings successful December.

More than 4 years later, Darian says that her begetter "should dice successful prison".

Fifty men who Dominique Pelicot recruited online to travel rape and sexually battle his unconscious woman Gisèle were besides sent to jail.

He was caught by constabulary aft upskirting successful a supermarket, starring investigators to look person astatine him. On this seemingly innocuous retired grandfather's laptop and phones, they recovered thousands of videos and photos of his woman Gisèle, intelligibly unconscious, being raped by strangers.

On apical of pushing issues of rape and sex unit into the spotlight, the proceedings besides highlighted the little-known contented of chemic submission - drug-facilitated assault.

Caroline Darian has made it her life's conflict to combat chemic submission, which is thought to beryllium under-reported arsenic the bulk of victims don't person immoderate recollection of the assaults and whitethorn not adjacent realise they were drugged.

In the days that followed Gisèle's fateful telephone call, Darian and her brothers, Florian and David, travelled to the southbound of France wherever their parents had been surviving to enactment their parent arsenic she absorbed the quality that - arsenic Darian present puts it - her hubby was "one of the worst intersexual predators of the past 20 oregon 30 years".

Soon afterwards, Darian herself was called successful by constabulary - and her satellite shattered again.

She was shown 2 photos they recovered connected her father's laptop. They showed an unconscious pistillate lying connected a bed, wearing lone a T-shirt and underwear.

At first, she couldn't archer the pistillate was her. "I lived a dissociation effect. I had difficulties recognising myself from the start," she says.

"Then the constabulary serviceman said: 'Look, you person the aforesaid brownish people connected your cheek... it's you.' I looked astatine those 2 photos otherwise then... I was laying connected my near broadside similar my mother, successful each her pictures."

• Gisèle Pelicot: How an mean pistillate shook attitudes to rape successful France
• Who is Dominque Pelicot?
• Pelicot household torn apart

Darian says she is convinced her begetter abused and raped her excessively - thing helium has ever denied, though helium has offered conflicting explanations for the photos.

"I cognize that helium drugged me, astir apt for intersexual abuse. But I don't person immoderate evidence," she says.

Unlike her mother's case, determination is nary impervious of what Pelicot whitethorn person done to Darian.

"And that's the lawsuit for however galore victims? They are not believed due to the fact that there's nary evidence. They're not listened to, not supported," she says.

Soon aft her father's crimes came to light, Darian wrote a book.

I'll Never Call Him Dad Again explores her family's trauma.

It besides delves deeper into the contented of chemic submission, successful which the drugs typically utilized "come from the family's medicine cabinet".

"Painkillers, sedatives. It's medication," Darian says. As is the lawsuit for astir fractional of victims of chemic submission, she knew her abuser: the danger, she says, "is coming from the inside."

She says that successful the midst of the trauma of uncovering retired she had been raped much than 200 times by antithetic people, her parent Gisèle recovered it hard to judge that her hubby whitethorn person besides assaulted their daughter.

"For a mum it's hard to integrate that each successful 1 go," she says.

Yet erstwhile Gisèle decided to unfastened up the proceedings to the nationalist and the media truthful arsenic to exposure what had been done to her by her hubby and dozens of men, parent and girl were successful agreement: "I knew we went done something... horrible, but that we had to spell done it with dignity and strength."

Now, Darian needs to recognize however to unrecorded knowing she is the girl of some the torturer and the unfortunate - thing she calls "a unspeakable burden".

She is present incapable to deliberation backmost to her puerility with the antheral she calls Dominique, lone occasionally slipping backmost into the wont of referring to him arsenic her father.

"When I look backmost I don't truly retrieve the begetter that I thought helium was. I look consecutive to the criminal, the intersexual transgression helium is," she says.

"But I person his DNA and the main crushed wherefore I americium truthful engaged for invisible victims is besides for maine a mode to enactment a existent region with this guy," she tells Emma Barnett. "I americium wholly antithetic from Dominique."

Darian adds she doesn't cognize whether her begetter was a "monster," arsenic immoderate person called him. "He knew perfectly good what helium did, and he's not sick," she says.

"He is simply a unsafe man. There is nary mode helium tin get out. No way."

It volition beryllium years earlier Dominique Pelicot, 72, is eligible for parole, truthful it is imaginable helium volition ne'er spot his household again.

Meanwhile, the Pelicots are rebuilding themselves. Gisèle, Darian said, was exhausted from the trial, but besides "recovering... She is doing well".

As for Darian, the lone question she is funny successful present is to rise consciousness of chemic submission - and to amended better children connected intersexual abuse.

She derives spot from her husband, her brothers and her 10-year-old - her "lovely son", she says with a smile, her dependable afloat of affection.

The events that were unleashed connected that November time made her who she is today, Darian says.

Now, this pistillate whose beingness was wrecked by a tsunami connected a November nighttime is trying to lone look ahead.